I’ve long marveled at how the prospect of buying or selling a home can transform the most patient poetry professor or the sweetest Sunday school teacher into a fast-talking, number-crunching, negotiator extraordinaire. Or, rather, it can make these sorts of people *think* they need to talk and act like wheeler-dealers! In my experience, this mostly involves ranting about “leaving money on the table” while they secretly quiver with the fear of making a mistake!

But offers and negotiations aren’t the only real estate decisions that make people think they should be more strategic than they are legitimately equipped to be. Many buyers and sellers believe they should know precisely how to time the market to buy at the bottom and sell at the top, despite the facts that: